The Path To Greatness
by Zessei
Summary: AAP Side Story: Twenty Facts About Yamamoto Yuuka


**An Alternative Path Side Story **

**The Path Of Greatness: Twenty Facts About Yamamoto Yuuka**

**Author's Note: **Here is the side story I promised you. Thanks for being so patient. As Yuuka was the most popular character I decided to do her first. Atsuko will be next. I'll probably do Atsuko's in response to the twentieth chapter.

**IMPORTANT: **This story is AU. That means ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. That means I can do whatever the hell I want and you have to suck it up and deal.

**BTW: **I don't own Naruto! I do however own Sajiki Atsuko, Yamamoto Yuuka, and Kimura Shuu. You can borrow them if you give me credit.

**The Path Of Greatness**

**One:**

Yamamoto Yuuka is not technically eligible to be Tsuchikage. A law passed when the nation was still new stated that any Tsuchikage must be born in the land of Earth. Yuuka was born on the border of Lightning Country. She was abandoned at birth in a wide field under a tree. A passing merchant, on his way to Iwa, happened to find her. As he had no children, or even a wife, he took the girl with him.

When the time came for a new Tsuchikage to be named Yuuka's name was cheered on the streets by the populace. Most of the council conveniently forgot that Yuuka might not have been an Earth native.

Fortunately, when one member went to check in the files office, all files pertaining to Yamamoto Yuuka's youth had mysteriously vanished.

The Stoat masked ANBU with the black hair may or may not have had anything to do with it.

**Two:**

Yamamoto Yuuka is the only Tsuchikage whose chakra is not Earth affinity. Her own chakra is Lightning natured.

However as Lightning jutsu are virtually unknown in Iwa Yuuka knows only one Raiton jutsu.

It's a suicidal jutsu that can fry the nervous system of anyone who touches you, even as it fries your own.

Since she's never used it no one knows just how proficient Yuuka is with Lightning.

**Three:**

Yamamoto Yuuka was supposed to take over her father's cloth trading business. War interfered and a law was passed saying that one child of every family had to enter the academy.

As Yuuka was an only child she had no choice.

Later she came to love being a shinobi, but she hated being forced into it and she never forgave the council for passing that law.

**Four:**

Yamamoto Yuuka was the dead last of her graduating class. She was completely talent less when it came to the arts of a shinobi. Partly because she didn't even try. She resented being forced into the shinobi life and with the logic of a child decided to cut her nose to spite her face.

Kimura Shuu, incidentally, was the best genin of the year.

**Five:**

Yamamoto Yuuka almost didn't survive her first C-rank mission. There was no attack, or any sort of accident, Yuuka simply caught the flu while being forced to walk miles in the snow. She got sicker and sicker on their way to the village they were supposed to rid of bandits and eventually Kimura had to carry her.

Kimura then had to sit with her as she began hallucinating from the fever, their sensei and other teammate had left to take care of the problem as swiftly as possible.

As Kimura listened to Yuuka's wild rants and tangents he couldn't help but find her just a little funny.

Years later Yuuka wouldn't remember much of that time, except for Kimura's smile.

**Six:**

Yamamoto Yuuka always blamed herself for her teammate's death. His name was Suzuki Seiji. He was very smart, but a little clueless. His talent laid in Genjutsu and Ninjutsu.

Incidentally she was good at nothing and Kimura was good at everything.

One day they were ambushed by a small group of Konoha nin while they were on border patrol.

The fight was going badly and she was doing nothing when suddenly Seiji shoved her out of the way. She got a brief glimpse of his smile before the Katon jutsu engulfed him.

Later that day as they buried what was left of him under a rare tree in Earth country Yuuka swore revenge on Konoha. She promised to never stop hating them for what they did.

**Seven:**

Yamamoto Yuuka was responsible for the death of her jounin sensei, Matsuda Tohru. After the death of Seiji she began to take her training seriously, but the fact was she really was talent less. However hate and anger always cloud better judgment and when Yuuka had the opportunity to get a little revenge she took it.

She was far outmatched.

Before the Jounin scout she was attempting to fight could give the finishing blow her sensei intervened. He managed to kill the Konoha nin but he took a kunai to his left lung in the process.

The last thing he said before he passed was for her to never stop trying and for Kimura to always take care of her.

They might have taken those words a little too seriously

**Eight:**

Yamamoto Yuuka has only attempted suicide once. After the deaths of both her teammate and her sensei, deaths she knew she was responsible for she almost didn't make it back to Iwa.

The kunai she was about the plunge into her own temple was stopped by Kimura. He called her an idiot and told her to grow the fuck up.

Twenty-five years later he still had the scars on his hand from where he gripped the blade of the kunai just a little too tight.

**Nine:**

Yamamoto Yuuka was taught how to fight by a tiny man fifty years older than her with a bitter attitude and a large walking stick. A large walking stick he used to hit her whenever she started slacking.

Incidentallly Yuuka spent three years virtually covered in bruises.

Yuuka never found out that the old man was Kimura's grandfather. And she never found out why it was he bothered to train her.

**Ten:**

Yamamoto Yuuka never took the chunnin exams. Instead she was given a field promotion and a team of genin to take back to Iwa for reinforcements during one of the bloodiest battles of the Second Shinobi War.

Yuuka was terrified, it was the first time she didn't have Kimura with her for a mission.

She recalls nothing now of the journey there, or about retrieving the reinforcements, or the trip back to the frontlines.

She did remember never being quite as relieved as she was when she saw Kimura, well and waiting for her.

**Eleven:**

Yamamoto Yuuka is a natural on the battlefield. Even though she had only a few years of taijutsu training under her belt she could knock down foes twice her size and double her experience. Once she learned how to let go of all her reservation she learned how to do whatever it took to beat her enemy.

Even if it did mean hitting below the belt.

**Twelve:**

Yamamoto Yuuka never took the jounin exams. Instead she was given a field promotion and a battalion of twenty shinobi.

It was supposed to be a suicide mission against an army of two hundred.

Not one Iwa shinobi died that day.

One hundred and sixty two Konoha nin did.

Yuuka came back with the title Fist of Iwa.

**Thirteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka became a General because the former one died and someone had to lead five hundred shinobi into battle the next day. Yuuka never asked for the honor, but she found that looking into all the faces of those she fought beside she could do no less then to accept the honor.

When the Tsuchikage tried to complain about her tactics and morals concerning the enemy Yuuka told him point blank, "Seeing as I'm the only damn General actually winning out there you just need to shut the hell up."

**Fourteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka hated the Yondaime Tsuchikage. The man was pompous, arrogant and cruel. He cared more about his legacy than he did the shinobi serving him. He was running his country into the ground fighting a war he could not win. And he knew it. He just didn't care.

The only thing stopping Yuuka from becoming a missing nin was the fact that hundreds of Iwa shinobi looked to her to get them out of countless battles alive.

Yuuka would not be like the Tsuchikage. She would not forsake them.

**Fifteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka is terrified by the Yondaime Hokage. It was the first time in her life that she felt so completely outclassed. Throughout their entire mockery of a fight he was messing with her.

Yuuka had no idea someone could be so good.

He decimated more of her troops that day then had been lost in two years.

Yuuka couldn't help but be relieved when she'd found out he'd died. His existence was too much a threat to her own.

**Sixteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka, in an act of childish pique, stole Namikaze Minato's hitai-ate right off his forehead. She knew she was going to lose that battle so right after he destroyed her elbow and left her effectively crippled for two years she snatched it from his head before Kimura thankfully grabbed her and ran.

Two weeks later, when she'd been captured again, he asked for it back. She told him she'd destroyed it. He'd been understandably angry, it's a great dishonor to have your hitai-ate stolen.

She lied though. She'd given it to Kimura for safe keeping and now it resides in a safe in her office.

Sometimes she takes it out and stares at it, remembering all the lessons she learned from that man who terrifies her.

**Seventeen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka resents Sajiki Atsuko. Her arm constantly needs to be adjusted or fixed and the only one who can do it is Atsuko. Atsuko knows this and rubs it in her face whenever humanly possibly.

She's tried several times to get Atsuko to stay in Iwa, offering money, a lab, servants, and whatever else she can think of.

Atsuko always says no, usually rudely.

Yamamoto Yuuka resents the fact that her even part of her strength is dependent on the whims of a woman she can't control.

**Eighteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka has been proposed to fifty-three times in her life. She's said no fifty-two times. The one time she didn't say no was when Kimura asked her not long after her instatement of Tsuchikage.

She cried and told him she wanted to, but that she couldn't.

He told her that he understood and that he'd always be there for her.

Yuuka thinks it's a sucky consolation prize.

**Nineteen:**

Yamamoto Yuuka cannot have children. A kunai to her lower abdomen, courtesy of a Konoha shinobi, made sure of that.

She survived but the amount of scar tissue left on her uterus makes children impossible.

Yuuka destroyed an entire Konoha encampment after she found out.

It was one of the greatest victories the Fist of Iwa ever claimed. Yuuka tries not to think of it.

**Twenty:**

Yamamoto Yuuka still hates Konoha, fifteen years after the war ended. For the sake of peace and the happiness of all involved though, she's forgiven that country despite it's many transgressions against her.

Years after she set her hate aside a blonde child who reminded her far too much of the Yondaime Hokage for her own comfort came to sit in her office and talk with her.

After he left Yuuka didn't hate Konoha quite as much as she had before, and she begins to think that maybe it's time to let go of hatred.

What did it ever do for her?

**Author's Note Reprise: **I feel that it's important you understand Yuuka a bit better. She is important to the rest of the story after all.

**REVIEW OR I'LL EAT YOU! RAWRGH!!**


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